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Episode 23 – Part 2 – Supporting candidates, mentoring new surveyors and preparing for examinations with Jen Lemen
41 Plays2 years ago
In PART 2, of this week's episode with Jen Lemen, we're discussing how to support candidates, mentor new surveyors and prepare people for examinations.
Across the three parts of this episode, we are discussing routes into the surveying industry, the benefits of the different qualifications and understanding what types of work you can take on.
Jen Lemen is a co-founder of Property Elite, Chartered Surveyor and RICS APC assessor. She is the author of 'How to Become a Chartered Surveyor', published by Routledge.
Jen has extensive experience in providing training services to students, RICS AssocRICS, APC and FRICS candidates and corporate clients, together with academic experience as a Senior Lecturer at the University of the West of England, Lecturer at the University of Portsmouth, External Examiner at the University of Westminster and Associate Tutor at the University College of Estate Management. Her RICS assessment experience includes sitting on final APC interview panels, APC appeal panels and being a lead APC preliminary review assessor.
In part 2, we discuss:
🧑🏫 The importance of education, communication, and support for candidates going through the APC process.
🫶 Resources from the RICS to help set up internal training schemes and provide necessary support to candidates.
🌱 How new surveyors can move from Level 2 to Level 3 work and ensure competency
👥 If firms can provide shadowing opportunities
Recommended
Transcript
Supporting New Entrants (Graduates & Apprentices)
00:00:00
Speaker
Lovely. So for our second topic, I think this moves on sort of quite nicely from where we finished on the first part was I suppose how surveying firms can help support people into the industry. So whether that's supporting graduates or people progressing through different routes or the apprenticeship schemes, how can surveying firms start to get involved if they're not already in helping people through?
00:00:24
Speaker
Yeah, sure.
Career Progression & Qualification Support
00:00:25
Speaker
So I'd say, right, the outset would be some really good information about which qualifications or membership levels the firm supports. So whether that's associate, MRICS, in some other firms, there might be qualifications even outside of RICS that are still relevant to surveyors. So some really good information about what you can do and what you need to be able to do it.
Training Counselors for Candidate Guidance
00:00:54
Speaker
I think there's a very big drive and a real importance on firms to train up counsellors to be available for candidates. The RICS do have an online counsellor module. I'd also advise that firms with counsellors,
00:01:17
Speaker
Those will need to be M or F RICS for the APC or associate with a certain number of years experience or F for the associate qualification is actually to become assessors for RICS and the more that the staff supporting candidates know about the qualification, they're actively involved in it.
00:01:39
Speaker
the better support and advice you'll be able to give to your team. Yes. I think if you're a candidate, an employee, one of the biggest barriers sometimes we find actually is candidates expecting to have their hands held through the qualifications and whilst it might get you through university or certain courses, the APC or associate is such a self
00:02:09
Speaker
motivated and driven process that you've really got to get your mindset in the right place to be able to get through it and sustain that. You know, when you're sitting there at six in the morning trying to revise, it's not because somebody works telling you to it's because you really, you know, you really, really want to commit to that process.
Essential Candidate Support Elements
00:02:30
Speaker
So I think firms educating candidates on, you know, this is how we can support you.
00:02:37
Speaker
this is what you need to do, having really open lines of communication. So, you know, if a candidate has something going on at home that's affecting their work or their APC, there needs to be that conversation, you know, to help them through that and not put people off the level of commitment and work that is needed to get there. So,
00:03:00
Speaker
I suppose three things from that would be support, communication and education. I think the three big ones for firms to do for candidates. Interesting. Sorry. Okay. I've got a couple of questions from that then. So if you're potentially maybe a mediumish to small firm, so you've got a few employees.
Resources for Small to Medium Firms
00:03:23
Speaker
Are there, and you're looking to bring people on, on support people into the industry, are there frameworks that you can look at in terms of putting, you know, content together, training content together to help people go through the process? And not in terms of obviously handholding, but I think if you look at some of the bigger firms and potentially they've obviously got
00:03:45
Speaker
training schemes that they've built to help bring people on and get through to whichever level of membership. Are there things, resources available to firms to be able to help set that up internally or is it something they need to build themselves from scratch?
00:04:06
Speaker
The RICS do have some resources available that firms could use to do that. I suppose that there is a gap in the information available and having the right people to provide the support.
00:04:26
Speaker
I guess in a way that's where firms like Property Elite do get brought in. So the types of things that firms need to think about.
Mock Interviews & Submission Reviews
00:04:38
Speaker
So a candidate working up to putting their submission together, they need a counsellor, they need a meeting at least probably an hour every three months, ideally more frequently than that.
00:04:51
Speaker
So for example, we might go into a firm and provide that mentoring session. Sometimes it can be for a group of people, sometimes ideally it's one-on-one. The next two, well, the next three things that I say firms definitely need to do. So candidate puts their submission together. They need somebody to review that. And then as counselor, it'd be signed off.
00:05:18
Speaker
sometimes having somebody completely independent can actually be a really helpful tool for firms to say, here's the candidate, here's the submission, are they ready? And then actually, they're kind of giving that responsibility for going, well, you know, you haven't quite done this, or, you know, you need to do that a bit, a bit like having an agent, agent acting for you, if you've got a property that you can let them do the do the difficult bit almost, and move the way.
00:05:46
Speaker
So definitely somebody to be able to review the submission and then the candidate ideally would need somebody who's an active assessor to run them through a mock interview. So they're really, really well prepared for the final assessment if they're an APC candidate.
Enhancing Skills via CPD Workshops
00:06:03
Speaker
Firms can also do some really great work in supporting candidates with CPD. So lots of firms that we work with either we go in and provide
00:06:14
Speaker
workshops on lots of different topics, all the firm organize them in-house. So perhaps if you've got a group of APC candidates or associate candidates, give each of them a different topic and then they have to go away and research it and then present back to the group on that topic, which is a great way to practice presentation communication skills, but also obviously gives them quite a good amount of formal CPD on top of that. So that
00:06:40
Speaker
I suppose regular contact and regular dissemination of information and just really hitting home, what makes a good submission and how to go about writing up a good piece of work for your assessor. So I'd say something that's structured regular and has
00:07:01
Speaker
has people with enough time to genuinely support candidates. You know, firms are so limited sometimes in the amount of time people have to do their own jobs, let alone support other people. So, you know, designating somebody with time and part of their job role for supporting candidates, I think is really important as well.
00:07:23
Speaker
Definitely, definitely.
Measuring Competency & Supervision
00:07:25
Speaker
I think my final question around this part, and I say this a lot so it might not be, is if you've just graduated or you've qualified, might be the better word at whatever level, potentially more so at the associate level,
00:07:45
Speaker
Are there ways, I suppose as a surveying firm, you can help measure if you're giving someone the right level of work, you know, in terms of better measure their competence, experience and knowledge and so on to move from say, let's say take the level two, not level two, sorry, the residential market as an example, where it's appropriate to move from doing level two work to level three work. But also as a, you know, a new surveyor, is there a way,
00:08:14
Speaker
yourself measuring whether you feel the work you're being asked to do is appropriate. So you can feel confident about going out and doing it. Yeah, definitely. I definitely think that the initial point of doing anything new, you need to be supervised and it needs somebody to review it, sign it off, talk you through
00:08:36
Speaker
you know, why did you apply that condition rating? Why did you give that advice? And doing that a number of times to make sure that you're happy with, I suppose, the more standard properties that you might have in a level two. I think when you're looking at level threes, I know that lots of associates go, well, I do level twos, but I'm not ready to go out and do a level three yet.
00:09:03
Speaker
We've got a couple of candidates who qualified as associate, for example. They run their own firms or they might be in firms doing level tees. They've actually either got an instruction for a level three and gone. I want to work with somebody who's qualified so they do it as a
00:09:26
Speaker
as a mentored, as a shadowed task. So somebody else is doing it obviously with their input. So, you know, again, they'll accompany them on the inspection. They might draft the report. They'll discuss the findings. If you're employed in a firm and you think, you know, I've done lots of level twos and actually I want to expand into level threes, I think stick your hand up and say, well,
00:09:48
Speaker
And again, can I go out with somebody and just watch what happens? And the more that you shadow, the more that you then get involved with the drafting, the advice, eventually you'll get to a point where somebody looks at your report and there's no red pen. And by that time, realistically, you know that
00:10:11
Speaker
You know that you're ready and I suppose with any of this, you know, I certainly know in what I do sometimes I come across something I've never come across before and
00:10:20
Speaker
it's always a case of just learning more. And if you're not sure, just ask somebody who does. There's no shame in asking for advice. And the absolute worst thing you can do is just to try and wing it. Because that is where claims come from. So yeah, absolutely, working with somebody else who knows what they're doing is the best way to then build your own
00:10:50
Speaker
competence to a level that you can go and do that solo.
Shadowing Opportunities & GDPR Concerns
00:10:55
Speaker
That sparked something in my head from things I've seen online actually around that shadowing aspect. Are there things that surveying firms need to consider if they allow someone to shadow them? Because I suppose where I'm coming from with that is I see
00:11:13
Speaker
I fear, I suppose, that if you allow someone to shadow you, potentially there's a GDPR issue, whether it's the customer that was wanting the survey or the vendor whose house you're going into or property you're going into, whatever it might be. Is that a valid fear? Actually, is it okay just to have someone
00:11:33
Speaker
come and shout at you or do you just need to get a confidentiality agreement signed just to say you know you won't share any personal data anywhere. That's the one I see come up a lot. Yeah I would say this is quite similar to if you go to the doctor and there's a you know there's a trainee nurse or a trainee doctor before you go in somebody says to you do you mind if x my trainee sits in on it and if you say no they don't if you say yes
00:12:00
Speaker
they're there. So I think from my perspective, if you do, you know, if you do want to bring a trainee, I think number one, it depends if they're already employed by your business, if it's your, you know, if it's your junior surveyor, if it's somebody on the team, I can't see any problem with that that they come along with you.
00:12:21
Speaker
obviously because that's just the course of providing the instruction and obviously they're fully supervised at all times. Yes. I think where it's mentoring and it's somebody not in your firm, it's not somebody who's got a contract of employment, I think certainly something in confidentiality so some form of could be a non-disclosure agreement that you know that information stays with them but I
00:12:46
Speaker
I also think it's important for the firm to tell the client that there'll be somebody accompanying them. The client might go, not bothered, fine. But if something did happen on that inspection, I don't know, something gets left open, something gets broken, there is an incident that happens. I think 100% firms need to cover themselves by telling the client, this is what's going to happen, this is X.
00:13:15
Speaker
you know, they're learning to be a surveyor and they're going to be with me. And if the client says no, you know, it's black and white that they don't come on that particular inspection.
00:13:24
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. It's good to hear because I think it's unfortunate if people can't come on inspections in shadow for that sort of confidentiality fear. Because I think there are ways around it, like you've mentioned around just getting an NDA signed or something that shows that you've considered the confidentiality of data. Because otherwise, it's very difficult for people to go and get experience in shadow and so on.
00:13:50
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. Where I've worked previously, we've had, for example, graduates coming in working experience and they've accompanied us on all types of different inspections, projects, whatever it is, but they do have a contract for that period of work that will set out things like confidentiality, et cetera.
00:14:13
Speaker
It could be the firms looking at having people coming to do mentoring opportunities, maybe just speak to an HR or a legal specialist for some sort of wording to use for those situations. Awesome. So before we move on to the final topic where I'm sort of preparing for different routes, is there any final advice you might have for surveying firms in terms of things to consider?
Qualification Routes & Degree Apprenticeships
00:14:38
Speaker
Sure. So I'd say the two main things would be
00:14:42
Speaker
Getting some advice on any candidates that you're not sure if they are best placed to look at, associate or MRICS, and then that advice leading on to which route into either of those qualifications would be most appropriate. Quite often I see candidates on the wrong route that's just causing them a lot more of a headache and they could be a much simpler way for them to get qualified.
00:15:07
Speaker
I also think just being open to the idea of degree apprenticeships and the fact that they can be quite cost effective for firms and they can really help to develop candidates so yeah just being aware that those are out there and a brilliant option for developing staff.